2009 Mac Pro Performance (Flashed 5,1 - 2.93 6 Core)

[Agent OrangeZ]

For the past year, I have been using a Hackintosh

Core i7 4770K, 16GB Ram (1866 Mhz), 120GB SSD, Nvidia GTX 770 2GB

It performs well. No lag. Yosemite running smooth. Running all of the kexts, etc to make most everything work. (iMessage not working... too much of a hassle to get it working.)


Anyway, I recently came into a 2009 Mac Pro that has been flashed to 5,1. It has a Westmere 6 Core Xeon @2.93 GHz. It has 8GB RAM installed (4x2GB 1066Mhz).

I pulled the GTX 770 from my Hack and installed it into the Mac Pro. Installed a fresh copy of Yosemite onto a Sandisk SSD.

I notice that this Mac Pro is a lot laggier than the Hack. Transitions and animations moving between spaces and Mission Control... stuttering. I know that this is a 6 year old machine here... but I am wondering if the processor/chipset is just THAT outdated. Or is the RAM the bottleneck? Would moving from the 1066Mhz to 1333Mhz RAM make that much of a difference? Is it just the fact that it is running 8GB and not the 16GB that the Hack has the difference?

The real reason I'd like to fully transition to this Mac is because... it is a REAL Mac and everything will work.

I have plans for this Mac... 12 Core upgrade, more RAM, Bluetooth 4.0 upgrade for handoff. Which will give me the most noticeable performance upgrade to curb the lag?

EDIT: Also, I am using a Samsung 4K Monitor... maybe that is too many pixels for this setup?

 

[someoldguy]

Is your SSD connected via one of the HDD sleds ? Mac Pro's use a 3Gb/sec transfer rate ; your hack probably has 6gb/sec.. Maybe this difference is constipating your system . Try putting your SSD on something like an Apricorn Velocity card in one of the pci slots . This'll give you the 6Gb/sec your hack has .
I'm slowly putting together a similar system to your's , (3.46 Westmere 6 core , 16 gig. memory , dual SSD's for OSX and(eventually) Boot Camp , 16 GB 1066 memory , 5770 graphics , couple of HDD's for data storage/Time Machine)
Anyway , so far the Velocity card and more memory worked for me.

 

[Shamgar]

Are you running the latest Nvidia web drivers?

 

[Agent OrangeZ]

Is your SSD connected via one of the HDD sleds ? Mac Pro's use a 3Gb/sec transfer rate ; your hack probably has 6gb/sec.. Maybe this difference is constipating your system . Try putting your SSD on something like an Apricorn Velocity card in one of the pci slots . This'll give you the 6Gb/sec your hack has .
I'm slowly putting together a similar system to your's , (3.46 Westmere 6 core , 16 gig. memory , dual SSD's for OSX and(eventually) Boot Camp , 16 GB 1066 memory , 5770 graphics , couple of HDD's for data storage/Time Machine)
Anyway , so far the Velocity card and more memory worked for me.

Yes I have those Icy Dock adapters to mount the SSD's to the sleds. Maybe that is part of it.

 

[Agent OrangeZ]

Are you running the latest Nvidia web drivers?

I can try it... but I never did that with the Hack and it performed just fine.

 

[Shamgar]

It could be worth a shot to try the web drivers. I'm mostly spit balling here. Not properly offloading the GUI work to the GPU was my first thought.

Your hack has significantly faster single thread performance, so assuming everything is working properly, it will feel snappier. But that Mac Pro should still have enough oomph to be smooth in operation.

8 GB is a decent amount of RAM, depending on what you're doing. The difference between 1066 and 1333 should not be very big. The difference between SATA II and III is not noticeable, but shouldn't affect things like Mission Control.

The 4k monitor is likely a factor. Yosemite does often struggle with HiDPI scaling, especially if you're using something other than 2x scaling. Fortunately, early reports for El Capitan indicate much improved performance in this area.

 

[Agent OrangeZ]

It could be worth a shot to try the web drivers. I'm mostly spit balling here. Not properly offloading the GUI work to the GPU was my first thought.

Your hack has significantly faster single thread performance, so assuming everything is working properly, it will feel snappier. But that Mac Pro should still have enough oomph to be smooth in operation.

8 GB is a decent amount of RAM, depending on what you're doing. The difference between 1066 and 1333 should not be very big. The difference between SATA II and III is not noticeable, but shouldn't affect things like Mission Control.

The 4k monitor is likely a factor. Yosemite does often struggle with HiDPI scaling, especially if you're using something other than 2x scaling. Fortunately, early reports for El Capitan indicate much improved performance in this area.

That did help. I was on the 1440 Scaled resolution. I switched it to the 1080P scaled resolution and it is a lot smoother. I can't install the Nvidia Web Driver because there is an OS detection issue. It thinks that I'm not on 10.10.3 because Apple put out a Native Nvida Driver Supplemental Update... so the Web Driver installer will not proceed.

 

[Shamgar]

If changing the resolution made a difference, then it's not a driver issue. So I wouldn't worry about trying to make the web driver install happen.

Dropping to 1080p is probably going to be the best temporary workaround then if the stuttering is too much for you. It's not a solution, but we'll have to wait until El Capitan becomes available and actually delivers a proper fix. This is also where I'm at with my rMBP 15".

 

[Agent OrangeZ]

Before I built the Hackintosh, I had a Quad Core i7 2012 Mini. This Mac Pro is getting close scores to it in GeekBench. I am happy with that... especially when you take into account that the Nvidia card is going to give me a boost in certain applications. I am just really digging having a Mac with expandability.

 

[iBuildMacs]

Hi. You have a few differences between your hackintosh and the Mac Pro.

1. 8GB vs. 16GB. You have half the RAM per core. I recommend upgrading to 16GB 1333MHz. The 1066 to 1333 speed will not be noticeable, but if you're going to upgrade, of course get the faster speed.

2. The above replies are correct about the SSD drive connection. Your hackintosh is connecting via SATA 3 which gets a write speed of about 500MB/s and write of about 400MB/s. The Mac Pro drive bay runs on SATA 2 which is giving you probably 260MB/s. Put the SSD on PCIe.

3. Your GTX 770 probably has PC firmware. I recommend getting it flashed to the correct firmware by MacVidCards. When the firmware is incorrect, sometimes the OS runs buggy.

If you have any questions, you're welcome to contact us on our site.